Blood donors exceed goal in Price City drive

ConocoPhillips and Price City set a goal for their blood drive: one unit of blood for each year of Price City's 100th birthday.

After calculating the results, they surpassed the goal of 100, by 13 units of blood to be exact.

ConocoPhillips and Price City partnered together with the American Red Cross to hold a blood drive on Friday to help donate the much needed lifesaving resource in Carbon County and all throughout the state. ConocoPhillips was planning on holding a blood drive as they have done before and when looking to promote the event to the community, Ryan Peterson, an HSE Lead with ConocoPhillips, told the city council about the blood drive. With the celebration of Price City's centennial ongoing, the city jumped at the chance to get involved and have the event be a part of the city's festivities throughout the spring and summer months.

The goal of 100 units of blood was not going to be easy, considering the size of Carbon County and the number of people who would be willing to participate in the blood drive. But that didn't deter the organizers and the members of the community who donated blood for those in need.

"The community really helped out with this blood drive," Peterson said. "In the end, the total amount of units would not have mattered because it was for a good cause. But seeing we made and surpassed our goal was awesome."

With the event taking place on a workday, both ConocoPhillips and Price City wanted to make it possible for as many employees as possible to take part in the event. So as an incentive they offered paid time away from the offices for employees to get involved, and by looking at the statistics, both entities succeeded.

According to Peterson, 15 employees from Price City and 32 employees and contract workers from ConocoPhillips took time away from work to donate blood. While those numbers are looked at highly, one other figure stands out above the rest.

While many who took part in the event had donated blood at least one previous time, this event brought out 42 first-time blood donors, according to Peterson.

The total number of first-time donors and the total number of units collected at the event is an accomplishment, especially in a small city such as Price, according to John Petersen, public relations manager with the American Red Cross.

"To get over 100 units of blood in a smaller city is quite a remarkable accomplishment," Petersen said noting that residents in Utah are very good with donating blood. To put the event into perspective, the total number of people who could be affected by the donated blood could reach as high as 339, he said.

Many members of the community got involved by donating blood, including Price City Mayor Joe Piccolo. Piccolo said he was pleased to see the amount of participation within the community for an event that helps give back to those in need.

"It was a wonderful event and it was exactly what I hoped would happen when we partnered together with ConocoPhillips," Piccolo said. "It speaks highly of a community I know very well to donate as much blood as they did."

Those who participated with the blood drive also have more reason to celebrate. This blood drive, with 113 total units, surpassed a previous Carbon County blood drive in 2003 when 98 units of blood were donated, according to Peterson.

One hope going forward is that the results from this blood drive will not only have an effect on future blood drives in Carbon County, but also with other blood drives in small areas around the state, Peterson said.

"Hopefully another city will see the amount of blood we were able to collect and will use that as their own goal to surpass," he explained.

Wanting to know the results as soon as they were made available, Piccolo called Peterson a few hours after the blood drive was over. What he heard reaffirmed his belief that Price City, businesses including ConocoPhillips and Carbon County residents can do a lot of good when they come together for a common cause.